No, we can’t believe they got rid of the old “five pictures of a kid turning into a lizard” covers, either. Image: Scholastic
For the unfamiliar—maybe you were an Eragon kid, we don’t know—the Animorphs books centered on a crew of mostly-normal kids who get granted the power to turn into animals in order to, uh, wage a bloody guerrilla war against aliens capable of taking over human brains. (It was kind of heavy!) Applegate (and her various ghostwriters) got a lot of credit for not glossing over how much it might suck to have to save humanity and cope with the complicated emotional life of being a vole, and the books remain fond memories for lots of kids growing up in the early 2000s. Now, Scholastic is teaming up with studio Picturestart—also responsible for the in-development Naruto and Borderlands movies, suggesting that it’s got at least a few key policy makers who spend way too much time on Tumblr or Reddit—to make a movie version of the series.
The film will presumably introduce audiences to Rachel, Cassie, Marco, Jake, and Tobias, and their not especially fun lives as child soldiers/hawk soldiers in opposition to the deadly Yeerk. Meanwhile, Scholastic has previously produced a number of films based on its books, including Goosebumps, The Golden Compass, and Captain Underpants.
